Atras
Atras ______ Bio, in brief: - (age 16) Was the main heir, along with his younger sister, of a prosperous farm run by his mother and aunt. When they died suddenly at the hands of highway bandits, Atras' unscrupulous in-laws quickly seized control of the land on which the farm sits, robbing Atras and his sister of their due inheritance. - (age 17) Poor and penniless, Atras begged and scrounged in the nearest town, saving enough to hire the services of the village magician Tantrik, a black magician who, for a fee, would instruct the buyer on how to incur occult forces to exact deadly revenge on the target of the customer's choice. - Atras digilently followed Tantrik's instructions for many weeks, until the final payoff: a giant black scorpion materialized in the house of his in-laws, on the day they were hosting a wedding. The scorpion proceeded to kill everyone in the wedding party before collapsing the roof over their heads and disappearing from the physical plane. - Atras, though gratified at having got his revenge, begins to have horribly vivid dreams of demons hacking the flesh from his bones, only for his body to regenerate its lost fresh and bone and for the torture to begin anew. Having had a comprehensive religious education, he recognizes this as the Reviving Paracca, one of the 36 hells reserved for punishment of the wicked. - (age 18) Atras grows increasingly worried as the dreams recur each night for a full year, with greater length and intensity each time. He seeks out the advice of a priest of Imode and confesses his misdeeds. The priest instructs him to look for a teacher of great renown in the area, Marpa, a mendicant hermit who lives on a hill. In spite of his humble circumstances, Marpa proves to be an effective teacher. He forces Atras to undergo many years of physical hardship and backbreaking labour. Many times, Atras attempts to escape and seek the help of a different teacher in the hope that he will finally be taught the practices that will absolve him of his karmic burden, which Marpa had promised but never delivered for years. Each time, as if by fate, Atras is caught and forced to go crawling back home to Marpa. - (age 25) After six grueling years, the hardships end and Atras is initiated by Marpa into the introductory steps of a graduated series of mystical practices which will allow Atras to control the circumstances of his death, among other things (ie. he can opt not to go to Hell or any of the other potentially miserable planes of existence awaiting the newly dead). Atras diligently practices for six months, at which point Marpa suddenly dies. Atras mourns the loss of his master, and the following night receives a vision of Marpa in a cave. Marpa clasps a glimmering, fiery gemstone that Atras intuitively recognizes to be the symbol of the mystical E Tzuighon Order, as well as manifesting other signs that only an initiate of the order could know. After much scrutizing by the temple heads, they reluctantly admit Atras as a novice monk of E Tzuighon temple. - (age 31) E Tzuighon Temple is attacked and sacked by the Giants in their descent on Sotra. The temple's main security protocol, the magical cryptography spell described below, is no protection against the Giants. Atras' training fails to avail him of being captured, and he is hauled off with those other monks who failed to escape, to be sold into slavery or worse. E Tzuighon (background) __________ An esoteric order of monks devoted to the contemplative study of the world deity Imode (spelling?) through the arts, meditation, mystical experience and magic. The E Tzuighon temple grounds were built by an ancient and mostly forgotten Orcish cult some 2,500 years ago and became the site of the E Tzuighon order only 1,500 years ago. It is guarded by an elaborate illusion spell ("magical crytography") that distorts perception of space, and is in effect only within close proximity of the temple site. Those subject to it experience an intense distortion of space, so that all sense of Euclidean propriety is lost, ie. objects jut out in multiple directions simultaneously, seemingly distant objects grow more distant as they're approached while near ones move further away, etc. The severity of the spell's effect is decided by the subject's proximity to the temple. In the outer ring of effect, the subject experiences mild vertigo and visual distortions, which grow stronger as they approach. In the inner ring, the illusion becomes so intense that the vertigo gradually intensifies to migraine headache and nosebleed, and the few foolhardy enough to press even closer through that state either lose consciousness or die suddenly from heart attack or brain hemorrhage. Upon entrance to the temple, novice monks are equipped with an enchanted talisman that nullifies the illusion spell's effects. In time, it's possible for their perceptive abilities to become honed to the point that they're they're able to resist its effects completely, thanks to their own continuous, consciously maintained mental effort and some highly specialized training virtually impossible to receive by other means. A monk must relinquish his novitiate's talisman within three years of taking up his robes or face explusion, with his memories of the temple's specialized secrets and practices selectively wiped from his mind (that is, a former monk will remember all of his experiences at the temple, but all knowledge of temple arcana will be irretrievable). This is one of many disciplinary measures employed at the temple. E Tzuighon Leadership --------------------- The Master of E Tzuighon heads a council of 7 monks, whose candidacy for leadership is decided strictly according to that monk's signs of attainment/progress toward Realization of Godhead. Of the 286 past masters of the temple in its 1,500 year history, only 39 have ascended to the exalted title of Patriarch, a non-dual state of being in which some fragment of the former master's mindstream abides all across time, pan-dimensionally. The Patriarchs are able to communicate with the contemporary temple leadership, but because their consciousness is fragmented across innumerable universes, times and dimensions, they are able only to provide portentuous and often cryptic signs in various minor forms. These signs can be inferred by reading tea leaves, performing certain types of fire rituals, observing sudden growth of mushrooms or lichen on statues of important figures within the order, and using oracular mediums who, when possessed, speak in a nearly inscrutable manner. Being able to read these signs is another subject of jealously guarded secrecy entrusted only to study by senior monks of high accomplishment and experience, who have earned the trust of the temple's leadership. In the days before E Tzuighon was attacked by the Giants and utterly decimated, there were several signs of a grave, ominous danger approaching, which were variously misinterpreted, ignored, or unseen by the temple's less vigilant monks. Consequently, most of them were thoroughly unprepared for the Giant's attack, with many monks hauled away by the cartload and sold into slavery. It's rumored that several of the more adept senior monks may have eluded their would-be captors..